GROWTH AND ENVY

“Would you prefer a United States where the typical family income was $100,000 per year but the top 5 percent averaged $500,000 a year or five times the typical family, or a United States where the typical family income was $30,000 a year but the top 5 percent averaged only $60,000 or twice that of the typical family?”

In other words, do you think overall prosperity is more important, or equality? If you answered “equality” then you’re probably a believer in Big Government, Big Spending, and Big Taxes.

We do not care how much someone else makes as long as our own quality of life is good and we have the freedom to do what we want. We do not really understand the “envy syndrome” where people attack others’ success even if those attacks result in a lower level of success for everyone (including themselves).

After all, the societies with the greatest freedom (and not so coincidentally, the greatest wealth) usually have the smallest wealth disparities, not the highest. Trying to “make everyone equal” fails — like all such government programs in the end — and creates greater inequalities than ever before.

Indeed, as the article concludes: “The failure of socialism and welfare statism clearly show those who demand equality at the expense of prosperity will get neither equality nor prosperity.”